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GRAXT MEMORIAL SERTICES. 




A mere statesman in tlio place of Liocoln and a mere solilier in tlio place of 
Grant might, indeed, liave maintained the Government at Washington and over- 
thrown the rebellion in the field. But the world wad entitled to a larger ontcomo 
of these four tempestuous years — the new birth of freedom, the new national 
unity, the new outlook of the Eepublic in the midst of the ages. There were 
voices heard tliat lifted the civil war above all bloodshed of history; one at the 
beginning, saying, with tender eloquence, "We arc not enemies, but friend!*;" 
the other at the end, in words that transfigured the face of Victory with a divine 
illumination, saying, "Let us have peace!" 



REMARKS 



OF 



HON. JOMTHAN P. DOLLIVER, 

OF IOWA, 



/■.» 



HOUSE OF REPPvESE^TTATIYES, 



SATURDAY, MAY 19, 1900. 







1900. 




h i-S. 



,'DUU 



REMARKS 

OF 

HOX. JOXATIIAN P. DOLLIYEE. 



The House having under consideration the following resolutions: 
''h'esolvedbi/ the House of Representatives (the Senate coucnrrhu)). That tho 
tlanks of Consross be given to the Grand Army of the Republic for the statue 
of Gen. Ulvssos S. Grant. 

'•Hesolveil. That the statue be accepted and placed in the Capitol, and that 
a copy of these resolutions, &ioned by the presiding ofBcers of the House of 
Representatives and the Senate, be forwarded to the chairman of the com- 
mittee of the Gr;ind xVrmy of the Republic on the Grant Memorial "— 

Mr. DOLLIVERsaid: 

Mr. Speaker: 1 would very much have preferred to be silent 
on an occasion like this, %Yhen the old comrades of General Grant 
and representatives of tho Confederate army have been paying 
these tributes to his memory; and I would not consent to say a 
word now except upon the reqitest of the committee in charge of 
the ceremonies, who have been hind enough to suggest that there 
is a sense in which I may be said to speak for the generation born 
since ISIO, which had not the privilege of bearing even a humble 
part in the national defen.se. In that year Thomas Carlyle, in a 
pamphlet, fierce and barbarous, called tho " Present Time,'' wrote 
the^e words, curiously made up of sympathy and of sneer: 

America's battle is yet to fight; and wo sorrowful, though nothing doubt- 
ing, will wi.sh her strength for it; and .she will have her own agony and her 
own victorv, though on other terms than she is now quite aware of. What 
great human soul, what great thought, what great noble thing that one could 
worship or loyally admire has yet been produced there? 

It is not certain that the belated prophet, crying in the wilder- 
ness of the Old World, lived long enough to revise this opinion of 
the new; but it is certain that he lived to see America find strength 
to fight her battle, to bear her agony, and to win her victory on 
such terms as were appointed; that he lived to see tho grave of 
Abraham Lincoln become a shrine for the pilgrimage of the hu- 
man race and to hear the name of Ulysses S. Grant saluted in all 
the langviagesof the earth; and had his days been lengthened but 
a little he would have seen the canon of Westminster open the 
doors of that venerable monument to admit the silent American 
soldier into the household of English-spoken fame. [Applause.] 

The unchallenged place of General Grant in history expres.-es, 
as far as such thing can be expressed, the value of liis service to 
his own nation and to his own age, and to all nations and all ages. 
Without a trace of selfish ambition in his entire career, he was in 
a high sense, from his youth up, guided by an inward monition 
that he was to jilay a decisive part in the arena of national affairs. 
At least twice in liis life, by his own modest statement, he felt 
within himself a distinct intimation of the future— once, on the 
day he graduated at West Point, and afterwards, on the day that 
Yicksburg fell. 

It may be an idle fancy, but it is not hard to believe that every 
step he took, from the farm to the Acailcniy, from the Academy 
to the frontier, from the frontier through the Mexican campaign, 
2 4162 



and thence to private life, a life of toil and self- suppression, from 
which, with a timid and hesitating request for a small command, 
he emerged into the Union Army, was part of the preparation, the 
post-graduate course, for the full equipment of this mysterious 
man. The greatest of his lieutenants said: "To me he is a mys- 
tery; and I believe he is a mystery to himself." If he had said to 
his classmates, "1 will one day take Scott's place on review,"' he 
would have been laughed out of the Arn^y. 

If, after Vicksburg, he had announced that he was the one gen- 
eral in the Army able to bring the rebellion to an end, he would 
have gone the way of all the others. Yet both these thoughts 
were in his head, and we can not regret that in the shadow of the 
end, when in pain and anguish he was writing for posterity the 
story of his public life, he was moved to throw this light upon 
the inner life he lived within himself. There are those who im- 
peach the whole social fabric because it imposes upon all a strenu- 
ous struggle for existence, and we have often heard that oppor- 
tunity alone makes the difference between failure and success. 
That is the philosophy of a little world; for we know that with- 
out burdens there is no strength and that in exposed places, open 
to the storms of all skies, the frame of manhood takes upon itself 
the rugged fiber which is the master of opportunity, a victor over 
cn-cumstances, a crowned athlete in the games of fortune and 
achievement. 

General Grant belongs to the new departure, which dates from 
1860. Though a man of mature years, he can scarcely be said to 
have lived before that time. He did not take enough interest in 
the Army to hold on to his commission; nor in his Missouri farm 
to make a living out of it: nor in the leather store in Galena to 
go back and lock it up after he heard of the fall of Fort Sumter. 
In a sense he had no politics. He voted for Buchanan in 1856, 
although he states in his Memoirs that he did it not out of affection 
for Buchanan, but because he had an old grudge against Fremont. 
[Laughter.] His politics were even more ambiguous than some 
of the heroes of later times. [Laughter and applause. 1 With 
the inheritance of a Whig, he joined a Know-Nothing lodge: and 
while his sympathies were with Douglas, he spent that fall drill- 
ing the "'Lincoln Wide Awakes. " It almost looks as if Providence, 
needing him for the new age. kept him clear and free from the 
confusion of tongues that iDreceded it. 

It is well-nigh impossible, even with the history of our country 
in our hands, to make our way through the political wilderness of 
fifty years ago. The most pathetic thing in the development of the 
nation is the picture of our fathers poring for generations over the 
musty volumes of the old debates, wearing the Federalist and 
Madison Papers to the covers, in their vain and hopeless search 
for the foundation of the faith. Washington grandly compre- 
hended the Constitution he had helped to make; but that did not 
keep the legislature of Virginia from disowning the national au- 
thority while he yet lived in honored retirement at Mount Vcn-non. 

Daniel Webster, supreme among tha giants of those days, vin- 
dicated the national institutions in speeches that have become 
classic in the literature of our tongue; yet even our schoolboys 
can not recite them without a sense of humiliation that his great an- 
tagonists were able to dog the steps of that lofty argument with 
minutes of the Hartford convention, showing Massac-husetts on 
the edge of the precipice before she had finished building Bunker 
446) 



Hill Monument. Andrew Jackson quit the game of politics long 
enough to swear his mighty oath. '"By the Eternal, the Union 
must and shall be preserved; " but that did not prevent the State of 
South Carolina from organizing her jieople against the national 
authority while old soldiers of the Revolution still survived 
among them. 

Little by little the nation had shriveled and diminished and the 
iuiT)ortant States increased, until, as the older men on this floor 
can remember, the bonds of the United States offered for sale, 
■svere hid for in the money centers of Europe, and especially by 
the hankers of Holland, on condition that they shoiild be counter- 
sigJied hy the State of Virginia. They knew that Virginia was on 
the map before the United States was, and they had a dim sort of 
suspicion that they might he able to locate the State of Virginia 
after the L'nited States of America had disappeared from the map 
of the world. [Laughter.] 

I would not heedlessly disparage any State, or any section, or 
any of the statesmen of that period. If they were called to deal 
with a situation to which they were not equal, it was one for which 
they were not responsible. James Buchanan was in no sense an 
ordinary man. He was all his lifetime a leader of men, though 
he was left at the end of his generation impotently trying to 
answer elemental and volcanic questions with the dead phrases of 
an obsolete vocabularj'. 

The conclusion had come. The time for rewriting the charter 
•was at hand. The joint debate of lawj'ers, long a nuisance among 
men, had at last become an offense to heaven. The darkness upon 
the path of the Republic had grown too dense to walk in. Yet the 
truth was never altogether without witnesses; there were always 
some eyes that could see and some ears that could hear. But the 
mobs that threatened William Lloyd Garrison in the streets of 
Boston, that drove John Greenleaf Whittier out of New England 
villages— what did they care for the testimony of John Quincy 
Adams, still eloquent in the grave? And the champions of free- 
dom, worn out by their long vigil in the night of slavery, fran- 
tically denouncing the Constitution as "a covenant with hell" — 
what had they learned of that great son of New England, who, in 
the debate with Hayne, had filled the old Senate Chamber, where 
the Supreme Court now sits, with the sj)lendor of his unrivaled 
genius? 

A new era was at hand, and the events became dramatic, with 
the swiftest changes in the scenery; for within two years from the 
day the militia of Virginia paraded about the scaffold of John 
Brown the soul of that poor, old, immortal madman was marching 
before the mightiest armed host the world ever saw, ujion whose 
banners had been written the sublime promises of public liberty. 
[Applause.] 

That was our heroic age, and out of it came forth our ideal he- 
roes — Lincoln, and the tru=;ted counselors who sat by his side; 
Grant, and the generals who obeyed his orders: and behind them 
both and back of all, thecountles.s ranks of the Grand Army of the 
Republic, ready and eager for that strange sacrifice of blood by 
which our weary and heavy-laden century has been redeemed. 
[Ai)plause ] 

It would not be possible, even if it were appropriate at this hour, 
to speak at length of General Grant's relation to those torn and 
bleeding years. Memory is still rich with the thoughts and emo- 

4.(K 



tions of that epoch, while for the youth of the nr.tion the story of 
that rising remitation is handed down m pages more fascinating 

Ve'c' mfiSo the Slrnay without a friend ; he left it above 
all rank His brave but undistinguished service ni Mexico had 
•beei forgotten, so that when he presented himself for duty they 
did not even answer his letters. He earned every promotion that 
he ever had, and asked for recognition only in the language of 
what he did. [Applause.] The woods arouna the old church at 
ciinioh showed the field soldier at his best. 

AttheSdof the first day, when his army, 00 000 strong, was 
in con\!sion, General Beauregard felt warranted m announcing 
to tlfe Da%"s government a complete victory. Before another 
S^htfall EeaiT?e-ard had obtained ideas on the subject ot victory 
Samostintwtivekind. [Laughter.] He bad learned that he 
was dealing wShL man who^iad the art of crowding two battles 
Ttoone-lhe fixed habit of making no report until the thmg was 
over [Laughter and applause.] When General Buel , mi es m 
advance of his troops, came upon the field and found scattered 
thoitsandsof Granfl army huddled under the cover of ti^^^^^^^^ 
bank, he said: "What preparations have ^^,^n nwte _foi the i^^ 
treat'' " "I have not despaired ot whipping thein jet said bren 
Prll Grant ''But if you should be compelled to fall back j^ou 
ravetrmsi^orts for only 10,000 men." "If I retreat " said the 
grim soldier ''lo'oOO men is Iill I shall need transports for." [Ap- 

^'^rScent writer in a leading French review, commenting upon 
Gen Horace Porter's Memoirs, takes occasion to deny to ^eneial 
G?"nt anv nlpce in the society of the workVs great captains, and 
wt'^a com ai lance that amounts almost to jocose satire, m view 
^/whatTis 'lately happened in tb^^ world refuses even to our 
civil war a place among the great conflicts of hstoiy, statin 
that it was more akin to the rude combats of antiquitv than to 
modern iuiopein warfare. But "such a criticism of mihtary 
skill' if vou will allow me to use the words ot James G. Blame, 
''is idle chatter in the face of an unbroken career of victory. 
wLn he was apnointed Lieutenant-General. and placed in com- 
mand of all the armies of the Union, he exercised militai-y contiol 
over 1 o-reater number of men than any general since the in\en- 
tioi ilii-earins Tn the campaigns of 180-t and 1365 the armies of 
heuiimicont'ainedinthealgreg^^ 

The movements of all these vast forces were kept m haimonj oy 
hiscmSTSensive mind, and in the grand consummation which 
fnsuS Union Ind liberty his name became inseparably associated 
with the true glory of his country ' Applause.] 

I have heard the names ot Napoleon and ot L^sai ana or 
Alexander referred to on this floor today. I care not nng about 
i exander oi Ca?sar or Napoleon. So far as I can make out, not 
^nroTihem is^ntitled to Aie respect of civnized men; no one o 
them represented an idea that was worth ^f ting to , much ess 
worth dvin- for. The Duke of Vv eimar used to tell his tueim^ 
when they lalked to him of Napoleon to ''be ot ^ood couiage 
hi Napolonism is tmjust,. a falsehood, and can not a^^^^ 
not last; and to-day there is hardly a trace of the little Lorsican 
adventurer in Europe except Ins grave. and no 

There can be no great soldier without a S\f^^,.^^f;,^^- JJ^^^ 
cause is great that is not right. [Applause.] It ^^ as the sublime 

44G2 



6 

fortniie of Ulyspes S. Grant to rise to the chief command of an 
armj^ whose line of march was upon the highway of human proj?- 
ress, which carried with its muskets the future of civilization and 
in its heart tlie inviolable will of God. 

The French military critic, to whose {grotesque comment on 
General Grant as a soldier I have before alluded, discerns in him 
at least one thing for griidging eulogy. He says that '"he was a 
good citizen." Without intending it and without being so con- 
stituted as ever to know it. he has touched the secret of this unique 
career, both in the field and in the capital — the secret of all real 
service of mankind — the thing that is making kings ridiculous and 
thrones unnecessary; the thing which has abolished the aristoc- 
racy of the sword and made that awkward and absurd weapon 
no longer the master, but the obedient servant of the State. 

The "feature of our civil war least comprehended by foreign crit- 
ics, and only partially comprehended by ourselves, was the fact 
that as soon as a conflict was over, all sides were willing to put 
an end to strife and to take up the broken relations of civil life 
in harmony and good will. From a human standpoint the advice 
of General Scott to I\Ir. Seward, to "Let the erring sisters go in 
peace," contained a measure of wisdom; for it must have made 
men sick at heart to think of civil war with its awful ministry 
of blood and its legacy still more terrible of feud and ])assion and 
sullen malice left over to plague the nation long after the victory 
of arms was won. 

A mere statesman in the place of Lincoln and a mere soldier in 
the place of Grant might, indeed, have maintained the Govern- 
ment at Washington and overthrown the rebellion in the field. 
But the world was entitled to a larger outcome of these four tem- 
pestuous years — the new birth of freedom, the new national unity, 
the new outlook of the Republic in the midst of the ages. There 
were voices heard that lifted the civil war above all bloodshed of 
historj'; one at the beginning, saying, with tender eloquence, "We 
are not enemies, but friends:" the other at the end, in words 
that transfigured the face of Victory with a divine illumination, 
saying, •• Let us have peace! " [Applause. J 

Is it any wonder that within a single generation every evil pas- 
sion of the strife is dead, every bitter memory of the past for- 
gotten? Is it any wonder that the boys who cheered the defenders 
of Vicksburg as they stacked their arms, who divided their rations 
with the Army of Northern Virginia, while Grant and Lee sat 
down to talk together as countrymen and friends, have done their 
part, with the boys in gray, to bring in the new era of Amei'ican 
patriotism? [Applause.] 

We have often heard the details of the war discussed, and I read 
not very long ago a book devoted to the subject, "Why the Con- 
federacy failed." There have been endless disputes as to which 
army was victorious in this engagement or in that, and I have 
heard it said on this Hoor that the Confederate army was never 
really whipped; that it simply wore itself out whipping General 
Grant. But here is a victory in which both armies have a share; 
that rich and splendid conijuest of the hearts of m(>n; nobler and 
v.'orthier in tlie sight of heaven than captured trophies or the 
spoils of warl [Applause. ] 

It was once a la^^hion in some quarters to exaggerate the repu- 
tation of General Grant as a soldier as a sort of background on 
which to draw a mean picture of his figure in civil life. I have 
4-102 



no sympathy with any such opinion. It is not credible that God 
endowed a man with the faculties required to order the steps of a 
million men in arms and at the same time left his eyes holden that 
he should not see the needs of his age and the destiny of his coun- 
try. What man of his time had a clearer appreciation of the value 
of the public credit or did as much as he to establish the disor- 
dered finances of the civil war upon a safe foundation? [Ap- 
plause.] 

When he took the oath of office in 1S69 he found the country 
filled with clamor about the payment of the public debt, some de- 
manding its settlement in depreciated notes; others calliug for 
new issues of paper promises, the cheap and easy product of the 
engraver's art, with which to wipe out the bonds which had been 
issued for the common defense. Into that noisy controversy came 
this calm and immovable man and from the east iiortico of the 
Capitol uttered words that have become part of the national 
character: " Let it be understood that no repudiator of one far- 
thing of the national debt will be trusted in any public place." 
And from that hour the national credit of America, without limit 
and without terms, has been as good as gold in all the martlets of 
the earth. [Applause.] 

I count it also as a part of General Grant's place in history that 
lie gave the sanction of his office to the most benignant treaty 
ever drawn between two nations, the treaty by which a deep- 
seated international difference was submitted to a high tribunal 
instead of being made a cause of war between two kindred peo- 
ples, which ought to stand side by side for the freedom of the 
world. [Applause.] Thus the man of war becomes the advocate 
of the worlda peace, and turning to his own countrymen in his 
second appearance to take the oath as President, he makes a con- 
fession of his faith in the future of our race so serene and devout 
that it reflects the inspired visions of old and gives reality to the 
rapt aspirations of the poets and prophets of all centuries. 

In his last annual message General Grant laments the fact that 
he was "called to the office of Chief Executive without any pre- 
vious political training. " He was too busy in the years that inter- 
vened between his auction of stock and farm machinery on the 
little Missouri homestead and his entrance into the White Mouse 
to study politics either as a science or an art. But there was one 
thing which he brought with him into civil life more important 
than anything else, and that was a firm confidence in the Ameri- 
can people and a settled faith that in all great emergencies they 
may be trusted to sacredly guard their own interests and the pub- 
lic welfare. 

It was that steady confidence which enabled him, when the Santo 
Domingo treaty was rejected by the Senate, in a storm of vitupera- 
tion from which even his own high office did not escape, to jippeal 
to the people of the United States, and in the language of his 
special message seek a decision from "that tribunal whose con- 
victions so seldom err and against whose will I have no policy to 
enforce." 

Because he believed in his countrymen he had faith in his conn- 
try, and he expressed his belief that the civilized world was tend- 
ing toward government by the people through their chosen repre- 
sentatives. "I do not share," said he in his second inaugural, "in 
the apprehension held by many as to tlie danger of governments 
being weakened or destroyed by reason of the extension of their 

44G3 



8 

territory. Commerce, education, rapid transit of thought and 
matter by telegraph have changed all this." It is not possible to 
think of him in the midst of such problems as now beset our 
affairs, deliberately adding to the national burden by defaming 
his country in order to exalt the motives of a mob of swift-footed 
barbarians in the Philippine Islands. 

At least once in his Administration, at a crisis in the Cuban 
situation, he ordered the Navy to prepare for action, and if the 
brief confiict with Spain, which the present Government was not 
able to avoid, bad come in his time, it would simply have antici- 
pated the grave events of recent years; leaving us twenty years 
ago. with vastly less preparation, exactly where we are to-day. 
In that case who can imagine General Grant directing the Navy 
to throw its victories into the sea, or ordering our Wave little 
armies of occupation to run headlong for their transports, leaving 
life and property and the social order in the keeping of half-naked 
tribes? 

It does not reqxiire a very difficult feat of the imagination to hear 
the voice of the old commander, the voice of the battlefields upon 
which the American flag has been sanctified to the service of civi- 
lization, bidding his countrymen go forward in the fear of God, 
hopeful and courageous under the burdens of their day and gen- 
eration. His comrades have presented to this Capitol his statue, 
a beautiful thing in itself, a thing, I believe, imheard of in the 
military traditions of any country except our own. It stands 
yonder in the Rotunda among our historic treasures. It will pre- 
serve his features and the inscription of his name until the 
heavens be no more. When the nation of America shall build in 
this capital, as it one day will, a monument to General Grant, it 
need not show forth the image of his person, it need not contain 
the record of his fame, for like the column of Waterloo proposed 
for Wellington in the graphic and noble conception of Victor 
Hugo's fiction, it shall not bear aloft the figure of a man; it shall 
be the memorial of a nation, the statue of a people. [Loud and 
prolonged applause on the floor and in the galleries.] 

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ST. AUGUSTINE 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 789 312 5 



